and even your great authority, Mosheim, allows (what indeed he could not deny) that the unitarians lived in communion with the catholic church in the early ages.

As the strict Ebionites held no communion with the Gentile christians, it is very possible that Clemens Alexandrinus might insert them in a catalogue of heretics, and allude to them under the name of Peratici, without intending any censure of their doctrine with respect to Christ. Besides, this was a name given them, as he says, from their place of residence, and therefore did not include. the unitarians among the Gentiles.

It is clear to me, from the attention that I have lately given to this subject, that even long after the doctrine of the divinity of Christ was established by councils and the decrees of emperors, the common people were well known to believe nothing of the matter; and yet, if they made no disturbance, and did not think proper to separate from the communion of the orthodox themselves, they were not excommunicated. This may be inferred from the passage which I quoted from Athanasius; but of which you have taken no notice, from which it appears that the unitarians were the of оλλ, the many. In the time of Tertullian they were the major pars credentium, the greater part of believers; and in the time of Origen they were the тo λnlos, the multitude, and the Ta Tλnon, the multitudes.

I am, &c.

LETTER VII.

Of the State of Heresy in the Time of Tertullian.

REV. SIR,

"here

NOTHING can well be more evident than that Tertullian represents the great body of unlearned christians in his time as unitarians, and even holding the doctrine of the trinity in great abhorrence. It is hardly possible in any form of words to describe this state of things more clearly than he does. Indeed, with respect to this you are pleased to make some concession, though by no means such as the case requires. "I must confess, Sir," you say, p. 74, seems to be a complaint against the unlearned christians, as in general unfavourable to the trinitarian doctrine;" but you add, "the complaint is of your own raising. Tertullian will vouch but for a small part of it. Simple persons, says Tertullian, (not to call them ignorant and ideots,) who always make the majority of believers, because the rule of faith itself carries us away from the many gods of the heathens to the one true God; not understanding that one God is indeed to be believed, but with an ECONOMY (or arrangement) startle at the economy. They take it for granted that the number and disposition of the trinity is a division of the unity. They pretend that two, and even three, are preached by us, and imagine that they themselves are the worshippers of one God. We, they say, hold the monarchy. Latins have caught up the word MONARCHIA, Greeks will not understand ECONOMIA. Let our author's words be thus exactly

rendered, and you will find in them neither complaint nor acknowledgement of a general prevalence of the unitarian doctrine among christians of any rank. Tertullian alleges, that what credit it obtained was only with the illiterate, nor with all the illiterate, but only those who were ignorant and stupid in the extreme. To preclude the plea of numbers, he remarks that the illiterate will always make the majority of believers. Some simple people, he says, take alarm at the notion of a plurality of persons in the unity of the godhead.”

Here, Sir, I complain of two gross misrepresentations of your author; the first respects the number of these simple people, and the second the degree of their simplicity, or, as you call it, stupidity. Whoever Tertullian meant by the simplices and the idiotæ, for any thing that appears, he meant the whole body of them. His language is general and unlimited, and therefore you are altogether unwarranted in your limitation of it to some of them. I really wonder at your assurance in this. I am far from construing Tertullian rigorously, and am ready to allow that some of these simplices and idiotæ might profess to believe the doctrine of the trinity, though he says nothing of it; but making all reasonable deductions on this account, he asserts a palpable falsehood, and against himself, if a very great majority of these simplices and idiota were not unitarians. On the whole, it is impossible not to infer from this passage, that in the time of Tertullian the great body of unlearned christians were unitarians, and that they were so in part from their construction of the regula fidei, or the creed, to which they gave their assent at baptism. They even regarded the doctrine of the trinity with horror, as nothing less than idolatry, en

joining the worship of more gods than one. Common sense can put no other construction on this passage, and Tertullian is far from being singular in this acknowledgement. It is made in different modes by several of the fathers, even later than the age of Tertullian.

In the next place, I complain of the degree of simplicity, or, as you call it, stupidity, with which you charge these unitarians. Tertullian calls them idiotæ, which you render ideots, and this you have the assurance to call an exact translation. You say, p. 91, that I consult only the ordinary lexicons. Pray, Sir, in what lexicon or dictionary, ordinary or extraordinary, did you find this sense of the term idiota in Latin, or diwrns in Greek? Can you produce any passage in an ancient writer in which the word has that meaning? I will venture to say that it properly signifies an unlearned man, or a person who has not had a learned or liberal education. But such persons may have as good sense as those who have had that advantage, and may judge as truly concerning the great principles of religion as the most learned. The doctrine of one God, or two Gods, requires no knowledge of the learned languages; and you, Sir, perhaps, would have understood christianity no worse if you had never heard of the Parmenides.

It is most natural to interpret the language of any writer by the use of it in other writers of the same age, character, and profession. Now the translator of Irenæus certainly uses the word idiota (idiwrns, no doubt, in the original Greek) for an unlearned man, without the least reference to any weakness of understanding. Speaking of the heretics, who boasted of their know

ledge, he says, lib. v. cap. xx. "Non contemplantes quanto pluris sit idiota religiosus a blasphemo et impudente sophista: Not considering how much better is a religious and unlearned man than a blasphemous and impious sophist." Certainly you would not render it a religious ideot, for ideots are incapable of religion. From the blasphemy here ascribed to heretics, who were Gnostics, you may also take a hint for the right understanding of the quotation from Justin.

Theodoret, in his explanation of 1 Cor. xiv. 16, says that "by diwrns was meant a layman, because it is the custom to call those dras who were not engaged in war;" meaning, perhaps, "those who had no public employments." Opera, vol. iii.

p. 191. Our translators of the New Testament had a very different idea from yours of the meaning of the word ιδιωτης.

diwrns. For in Acts iv. 13, we read that when Peter and John were examined before the High Priest and his kindred," they wondered at their boldness, because they perceived them to be dira;" but it is not rendered ideots, which would have been absurd enough, but unlearned and ignorant men. In 1 Cor. xiv. the word occurs three times, and is always translated unlearned; and in 2 Cor. xi. 6, Paul calls himself dwTYS, and he could not be supposed to have called himself an ideot. It is there rendered rude.

One of your proofs, p. 83, that unitarianism was proscribed in the primitive church in the time of Tertullian, is his saying that the regula fidei in his treatise de Præscriptione was the belief of all christians. But every writer, if we wish not to cavil, but to understand his real meaning, must be interpreted in a manner consistent with himself. It is a degree of candour